Baron Pasquale Revoltella

Art & Culture

11 May 2017

Art & Culture

Baron Pasquale Revoltella

My dear and esteemed friends.... I, Baron Pasquale Revoltella, am very glad that for almost six years my palace has been open once again for visits to my home. It is a pleasure to accompany guests personally and, while following the corridors of my palace, designed by one of the most important architects of the time, Friedrich Hitzig of Berlin, tell you of my life, my adventures and dreams, together with my dear friend, Pietro. One of the works of which I am particularly proud is the one I commissioned from Peter Magni and which was inaugurated in 1863, entitled 'The cutting of the Isthmus of Suez’. It depicts a meeting: in the middle there is Europe personified stretching her right hand to the Red Sea and the left hand to the Mediterranean, while in the centre Mercury represent trades, commerce and profit, and shows the way to Navigation, represented by a beautiful young woman with an oar.

It is a powerful allegory of a work that has changed the destinies of the world. Can you imagine how trade with the Orient used to be before Suez? Sailing ships had to get to Gibraltar, then circumnavigate all of Africa, get to India and then continue across dangerous seas infested by pirates. Or sail to the Strait of Magellan and then cross the entire Pacific Ocean. Ships departing and arriving after years! As you can imagine, I have been a man who has been far-sighted, but I also liked to see what was happening around my house, to check that my employees were working. Thus, at the corners near the windows of each floor there is an innocent rectangle, from which, through a system of mirrors, unseen I could control what was happening outside. What do you call such a system now? Ah yes, CCTV. My life has been an extraordinary one. Born in Venice in 1795, the son of a meat trader, I moved to Trieste as a child when my mother was widowed. After a period of hard graft, I became the protagonist of a quick, well-deserved, social ascent. Thanks to my entrepreneurial skills in the importing of timber and grain and to my friendship with von Bruck, the Minister of Trade of the Habsburgs, I became director of Assicurazioni Generali and advisor to Lloyd Austriaco. As a stock exchange member, I had shareholdings in numerous companies, both in Trieste and elsewhere, and became the official representative of the Austrian government and vice president of the Suez Canal Company, a project that changed the course of world history. I personally went to Suez to visit the area of ??work in 1861, travelling from Trieste aboard the SS Nettuno.

Important guests have visited my palace, including the Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg, a visit he made at the same time as the Empress Elizabeth was staying in Miramare, after she returned from the island of Madeira. Upon my death in 1869, just a few months after the inauguration of the Suez Canal, I bequeathed my palace to the Museum of Fine Arts so it could be used to educate young people's taste and improve the level of training of artists and artisans. I look forward to welcoming you to my palace…

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Lorenzo Acquaviva

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After obtaining my degree in American literature, I enrolled at the ARTTS International stage training centre in England. I experiment as much as possible: from soap operas to social theatre in prisons and mental hospitals and working in films, television and theatre. In Trieste, where I was born, I have for years played the role of Baron Pasquale Revoltella, one of the most charismatic and mysterious figures of the 19th-century Habsburg empire, whose palace is now a museum.